The Torture of Ben & Abigail Gates
by C-Swag
Summary: An exploration of ancestry, inheritance, and the psychosis that goes with it. Don't let the title fool you - this is a humorous piece. Part 4 of 5 posted.
1. The First

Author's Notes: A fun little exploration into ancestry, inheritance, and the psychosis that comes with it. Part 1 of 5.

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**The Torture of Ben & Abigail Gates**

The First.

Late afternoon, July 4th. Fitting.

Abigail waddled down the stairs with her very swollen ankles and her very round belly, pausing halfway to the first floor long enough to call Ben in from the kitchen. "Honey?"

"Yeah?"

"I think... I think it might be time!"

Of that, she probably could have been certain. She was standing mid-step on the soaked carpet that hadn't been soaked thirty seconds previously.

And with all the flutter of excitement of about-to-be a first-time father, Ben took the stairs two at a time, grabbing the pastel purple bag Abigail had clearly labeled "Hospital" from the dresser top and sprinting down the stairs to assist his very pregnant, about-to-be-a-mother wife.

Though pregnancy is never easy on women of Abigail's figure and stature, she was still tougher than most women (except his mother) and any man Ben had ever met. She held him with an ice blue glare as he helped her into the passenger seat of his car. "Don't you dare start freaking out on me now, Ben."

He flashed the closest thing he could manage to a winning smile. "Of course not, dear." Despite her warning - death threat - he still did ten over the whole way to the hospital.

Then, it was the women, the patronizing nurses and their patronizing smiles. Is that even possible, for women to patronize men? he wondered. Etymology was never his strong suit. The nurses spoke in voices two octaves higher than a normal woman's speaking voice, like he was some overgrown child or some sort of head case. They took Abigail down a long off-white corridor and Ben paced around the so-called 'father's lounge'.

It was, thankfully, not a long wait. He trotted after the doctor, Dr. Sel-something-ski, to the postnatal recovery area. Abigail, blonde hair standing in every which direction, lay slumped against a stack of pillows.

Ben made the crucial error of assuming a short length of labor meant an easy labor. "So, that wasn't bad, was it?"

Abigail cracked an eye. "If you ever say that again, Benjamin, I will saw off your genitalia with a butter knife."

One of the nurses snickered from somewhere behind Ben. "Death threats are common in this room, Mr. Gates. Just be thankful you didn't hear her cursing you to kingdom come."

Ben stored this piece of information away. Death threats during labor are common, and never suggest to a woman that giving birth is easy.

Then, he realized, there was another person he was in this room to see. "Where is he?" Ben asked, grinning.

"He?" The nurse looked puzzled.

Abigail cracked the other eye, frowning slightly. "Ben..."

"What?" Ben realized the grin was dripping from his face onto the floor.

"It's a girl, Ben."

The rest of Ben's smile hit the floor faster than an anvil. A girl? That was definitely not in the plans.

"A girl?" he repeated. "That... well, that wasn't my first choice."

Abigail sighed and closed her eyes, her voice infuriatingly superior. "Well, you flipped the cosmic coin, Ben. Don't blame me."

Ben folded his arms, calling on all of his willpower to resist the urge to pout. "Well, fine. We can always have a boy later."

Abigail's eyes flew open wide and she stared at him. "Can we worry about this one first, Ben? Jeez." She paused for a moment, scanning his face. "What do you want a boy so bad for, anyway?"

Ben shrugged. "We need a boy to carry on the Gates family name."

He got the sense that she was trying desperately to hold back from rolling her eyes.

Ben sensed a topic change was in order. "So, where is she? Can I hold her?" Ben looked to Abigail, who looked to the nurse, who nodded her approval.

"As long as you don't drop her," Abigail assented. "We don't need our kids ending up more like you than they have to."

"Thanks, dear." Ben moved to the small plastic rectangle that held the infant. With much coaching from the nurse and from his ever-helpful wife, Ben held his baby daughter and started scanning his mental list of historical American names. Because with the family name Gates, how could his daughter not have a historical name?

He smiled as the baby yawned widely. There would be plenty of time for them to have a boy.

_Charlotte Elizabeth Gates  
July 4, 2009_

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Reviews are much appreciated.

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	2. The Second

Author's Notes: Part 2 of 5. Thanks for the reviews.

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The Second.

The Sunday before Memorial Day, and three days before June; early morning.

Patrick and Emily had been briefed. Ben was a general commanding troops for a war, or so it seemed to his amused parents, and it was truly laughable the way he spoke to them as if they had never dealt with a child before, apparently failing to stop and consider that he had once been twenty-three months old as well.

Charlotte was almost two years old and spent most of her time happily garbling away above everyone else's heads in her own made-up language - a striking similarity she held to her father, Abigail noted. If she was not jabbering away about something unintelligible, she was yammering on about when her baby brother would arrive - another trait of Ben's, the constant discussion of another Gates man in the family tree.

But still, Patrick and Emily had been placed on grandparental standby to take care of Charlotte during the delivery, and Abigail grew larger and rounder on her way to baby number two.

"Ben!" Abigail's sharp fingernails dug into his arm and Ben started awake. Bleary-eyed, he caught a glimpse of the digital clock on the dresser opposite the bed - 4:42 a.m.

"Abby? What's wrong?" He rubbed at his eyes, trying to make out his wife's figure in the dim light of pre-dawn.

"Get the car," she hissed, inching her way out of bed. "It's time."

Ben rocketed out of bed and pulled on halfway decent clothes, grabbing the phone from the dresser as he went, punching numbers into its face.

"Benjamin?"

"Mom? Abigail's in labor."

"We're on our way," Emily answered shortly and the line went dead.

Ben tossed the phone back onto the dresser and stared at Abigail, who had seized her overnight bag and was headed for the stairs. At the rate she moved, Patrick and Emily would probably have enough time to stop for coffee and donuts before she got into the car. And as Ben anticipated, they pulled into the lane, Patrick at the wheel, driving too fast and spitting gravel, as Ben helped Abigail into the car. Ben rolled his eyes. Sometimes our fathers forget they age, he thought.

Abigail took her last few moments getting into the car to give some last minute instructions to Emily, and to bark some choice curses at the Gates men. Patrick patted his son sympathetically on the shoulder.

"Be glad you only had to do this once," Ben told his father, climbing into the driver's seat.

Three hours and fifteen minutes later, Ben had been called in from the stiflingly familiar daddies-to-be lounge and back to the recovery area. This time, as he entered the room, he didn't have to ask if his child was a boy or a girl - pink balloons with pink patterns procclaimed "It's a girl!" in pink font. At the center of the room laid Abigail, covered in a thin pink sheet, holding a dark-headed baby wrapped in a pink blanket.

Ben tried to keep the disappointment from his face. Abigail saw it and rolled her eyes. "Don't even say it."

"I won't, then." Ben drew nearer and saw his second child and second daughter asleep in her mother's arms. "She's cuter than Charlotte was, I think."

Abigail rolled her eyes again, obviously still cranky from giving birth. "Don't start playing favorites now, Benjamin."

"Well, Charlotte wasn't as chubby. Chubby babies are cute. It's a law of nature." Ben grinned at his wife. "I think it's all that Ben & Jerry's you ate this time, honey."

"Ben." Abigail's voice was deadly, and Ben didn't much feel like getting something thrown at him. But Abigail's anger seemed to be limited to her words, since she was holding her sleeping daughter. "You know, your fixation on having a boy is just an idiosyncrasy of an outdated patriarchal society. We don't have to have a boy for the Gates name to live on, if that's what you're so concerned about."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

Abigail rolled her eyes yet again. "It means there's nothing wrong with a man taking his wife's last name in this society."

"But--" Ben stumbled, because Abigail was fundamentally correct, but that didn't stop him from wanting a son to carry on his family name. "But there have been two hundred years of Gates men! More! An unbroken chain for generations! I can't have that end with me!"

Abigail sighed. "Whatever you say, Ben. Here, hold your daughter. And don't you dare make that face."

"What face?"

"The 'it pees and poops and spits up and cries' face."

It was Ben's turn to roll his eyes as he held his second daughter. He was doing all right at this dad thing, if he did say so himself. Maybe he'd get good enough to convince Abigail to have one more.

_Martha Custis Gates  
May 29, 2011_

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As always, reviews are most appreciated.

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	3. The Third & Fourth

Author's Notes: Thanks for all the reviews. There's a few questions several of you asked that will get answered in this story, but most likely not in this chapter. Thanks for reading & reviewing. )

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The Third and Fourth.

Midday on a swelteringly hot Labor Day. Oh, irony of ironies.

Special Agent Peter Sadusky of the FBI found himself unwittingly filling a temporary job position, one in which he had been given no proper training. Patrick and Emily were somewhere out east, exploring for what was probably going to end up being more headaches for Sadusky's division, caused by the Gates family. Were Abigail not nine months and four days very pregnant, the younger Gates pair would likely be with them.

But, Labor Day being what it was, a day of rest from labor, Ben dialed Sadusky and brought him in for his impromptu job, with Abigail screaming up a storm in the background, cursing the day Ben ever involved her in his hunt for the Templar treasure.

Sadusky cursed that day quite often himself.

Charlotte was three now, and her talkativeness had tripled since passing beyond the realm of the Terrible Two. Marty was sixteen months and no less talkative than her older sister, and so when Sadusky knocked on the door to the Gates manor, he was bombarded with the incessant chatter of the two Gates girls.

"Good luck, Abigail," he offered as their mother loaded herself with immense effort into the passenger seat of their minivan. Sadusky smirked - Gates driving a minivan. Cosmic revenge.

Ben glanced from an amused Sadusky to his rambunctious daughters to his laboring wife, whose belly was much bigger than he remembered during her first two pregnancies. He drove to the hospital, doing only five over this time, muttering a quick little prayer under his breath the entire way - a boy, a boy, a boy, please God, a boy.

This time, after Ben and Abigail parted ways at their usual place - Abigail down the unmarked corridor, and Ben to the waiting room, Ben sat and checked his watch repetitively. For the next six hours. By the time someone was calling his name, and Ben was shaking himself awake, the world outside was pitch black.

"How long was the labor?" Ben asked as he trotted down the corridor behind the doctor.

"Ten hours," the doctor answered, leading Ben to the room.

"Ten hours?"

"Yes, Benjamin! Ten hours! We are never having more children, ever!" came Abigail's voice from inside the door. Ben turned inside and into a wall of pink balloons. This time, he could not hold back the disappointment on his face.

"Another girl?"

"Another?! Try two more!"

"Two?"

"Twins, Benjamin Franklin Gates! Twin girls!"

"Twin girls?"

Abigail glared at him. "Yes, twin girls, and don't you dare start that whole 'I want a boy to carry on my family name' business, Ben!' It's not my fault we keep having girls, and you just need to smile and be happy."

Ben sighed and fell into the chair beside Abigail's bed. "Where are the girls?"

"In the nursery." Abigail's firm gaze never left her husband, but he had been properly scolded and wasn't going to mention his 'having-a-son' mania.

Except –

"What are the odds that both of them were girls, you know?"

"Fifty percent each way. Gender isn't determined by both parents, you know."

Ben raised an eyebrow. "Thank you, Dr. Gates, M.D."

Abigail raised an eyebrow to mimic Ben's. "I would really like to see you give birth, Ben. You have no idea how much money I'd pay to see it." She yawned and closed her eyes, resting back on the pillow.

Ben leaned over to kiss her forehead gently. "I'm going outside for a breath of fresh air. Then we can deal with the naming thing."

"Looking forward to it," Abigail replied.

_Eleanor Anna Gates  
Jacqueline Lee Gates  
September 3, 2012_

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Reviews are greatly appreciated.


	4. The Fifth

Author's Notes: Thanks again for all the reviews. I'm glad that some of you seem to be enjoying the story. This chapter should answer a few of the questions that some of you had. )

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The Fifth.

Six p.m., Flag Day.

"B-bu-but I--"

"Come on, you're a respons--"

"On second thought, Abigail, maybe we should call my parents," said Ben. He glanced at his wife, who, for the fourth time, was going into labor. The three times previously there had been an air of snappish urgency and excitement about her, but this time, she was relaxed. Just another day at the office.

"Yes! Please! I'm no good at this kid stuff!" The impromptu babysitter looked desperate for a way out of the job.

On cue, one of the girls, a 21-month-old twin, either Ellie or Jackie - Abigail and the twins' sisters remained the only ones that could tell them apart - began to wail from the kitchen. Charlotte, the responsible oldest, almost five years old, came trotting in from the kitchen.

"Marty put glue in Jackie's hair, Mommy," Charlotte reported diligently.

"I did not!" screamed three-year-old Marty.

"Ben. Can you go take care of them, please?" Abigail's voice was tired, but she smiled serenely and Ben knew it was time to play the stern, authoritative father. "I will deal with _this _one." She glared at the stand-in babysitter, who shrank back away from her.

"I didn't ask to be stuck for hours in the middle of the Gates family zoo!" The babysitter cried, throwing his hands up. "Your girls, every time I come over, they don't listen to me, they pull my hair, they throw their food on the floor! What makes you think I'm going to be able to feed them or bathe them or make them go to sleep? I've never taken care of another human in my life! I can barely take care of myself!"

Abigail grinned, ignoring her twinging stomach. "I thought you always wanted girls hanging all over you, Riley."

Riley Poole threw his hands up, obviously close to panic. "Not your kids! Not your miniature Abigails!"

Ben came in from the kitchen holding a Elmer's glue bottle and a struggling toddler with blonde hair full of white, sticky glue. "This one needs a bath. Make sure you wash her hair really well." And he unceremoniously dumped Jackie into Riley's arms.

Riley struggled under the unexpected weight of the girl, who immediately began to tug at Riley's hair. "Ben! This is a really bad idea!"

"Ready to go, dear?" Ben asked Abigail, ignoring his best friend.

"Absolutely, honey," Abigail answered, turning for the door. "It's one night, Riley. You can handle them. Just keep all sharp objects out of arm's reach. And call Ben if you need anything."

"How about a room at a mental hospital?" Riley called to their retreating backs.

"Don't be silly, Riley," Ben answered, turning back to close the door. "You're now an exhibit of the Gates family zoo." And he closed the door with a snap.

"Figures," Riley muttered, and Jackie squealed and pulled out a fistful of Riley's hair.

Five hours and nineteen panicked Riley phonecalls later, Ben was once again a proud father. With the growing insanity of his household of little women, Ben rarely had time nowadays to drive Abigail nuts with his talk of the next one being a boy. But that certainly didn't stop him from keeping his fingers crossed as he entered the recovery room – pink. Again.

Four pregnancies. Five girls. Ben sighed in resignation and dropped into the chair beside Abigail's bed. Abigail was holding the newest Gates baby girl, just as sweet and docile as all the girls before her had been. Delivery, thought Ben, was probably a lot easier than all the craziness that came after. But he wisely chose not to mention this thought to Abigail.

"Ben…" came Abigail's warning tone, but after five years spent praying for a boy and getting five girls instead, Ben knew better.

"Well…" said Ben, leaning over to look at his newest baby daughter. "We did agree that this one would be the last one." He struggled to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

"Yes, we did." Abigail said, and Ben knew that this was not a negotiation. It really was unfair of him to keep asking his wife to spit out children. They were lucky she was even able to have that many – so many couples were done at one or two.

"What are we going to do with five girls, anyway?" Ben asked.

Abigail looked over at him with a glance that clearly told him exactly how stupid she thought that statement was. "The same thing we would do with five boys, Ben."

"No," Ben answered, shaking his head. "I don't think so."

"No? And why is that?"

"Dresses, for one thing."

"Dresses?"

"Yeah, dresses. Those poofy sparkly things teenage girls wear to their high school dances. That cost 500 apiece. How many dances do they have in high school? Let's call it five – five dresses for five girls at 500 ap—"

"Ben!" Abigail cut him off sharply. "Charlotte is almost five, not almost fifteen, alright? We have some time to worry about Prom. Or even puberty."

Ben shuddered. "And imagine all the lecturing I'm going to have to do about men. I remember what it was like to be a high school boy."

"Ben," Abigail said again, and this time her tone was gentler, more reassuring. "You've got bigger problems right now than terrorizing your daughters' first dates, alright? Now stop freaking out, alright?"

Ben shook his head. "They won't be allowed to date."

Abigail sighed impatiently. "Ben…"

_Dolley Madison Gates  
June 14, 2014_

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Reviews are, as usual, very much appreciated.


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